Mothering Love for even a Grumpy Mother

Today my heart swells with family love, the beautiful cards and gifts I received from my loved ones have really made my day.

 

 Below is a card which is especially sweet for me as my 4 year signed his name, he's only just discovering writing can be fun, refusing to even try in the past.

And this a lovely portrait of me drawn by my 6 year old that came with a lovely poem on the back.

Mothers Day. It's Mothers Day hip hip hooray

They've done lots of work so must be worn out

They've worked really hard and done cleaning and shopping

Our Mums are so special to us and caring for us

They are so nice and lovely, happy and sometimes sad

Sometimes they are grumpy and that's why I love her so much.

Happy Mothering Sunday.

National Poetry Day

What's your favourite poem?

Amanda.x.

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne

During the holiday we headed to Lindisfarne, taking time to check out the tide times as you have to drive across a strip of land which is submerged during high tide.  

Maisie was quite disappointed as she thought we'd be driving through the water. 

 It's quite a long walk from the car parks to the actual castle, especially for little legs.

 We were one child down due to the "lurgy" although at this point we just though Ben had eaten something bad and not that it would take pot shots at us all. These 3 are hiding from the sun and probably sweating in the 15 layers they're wearing, as it was supposed to rain and we dressed them for Arctic conditions.

 To break up the walk we wandered along the beach side looking for shells, we were lucky enough to spot a seal on the walk back.

We never made it inside which was a shame but one of the necessary evils of travelling with small children, their attention span for old things is not really the same as ours. 

Lindisfarne is certainly a beautiful and peaceful pace and I'd love to return there and spend longer visiting the rest of the island.

I hope you've had a happy holiday.

Sea, sand and sickness

So for a few years now we've been taking holidays with family down south, however this year we went North instead and headed towards Northumberland.  It's not far to drive just over an hour and the beaches there are wonderful. We were staying in a grand and beautiful holiday house, they have to be quite big as it's for Sue & Dave(Mother/Father-in-Law) and their dog Fox, Claire and Lee(Sister/Brother-in-Law), their children Ben and Josh and their dog Bonnie and myself, Stu, Maisie and Lucas.

We were staying within a short drive/long walk with children from Cresswell beach, a shell finders haven, and after a week of beautiful weather I was hopeful it would continue throughout the week. 

Well how wrong was I, and the week had more in store than a bit of dodgy weather.

I'll leave the highlights for other posts but a quick run down of the week is 

Friday:
arrive to lovely house settle in, weather nice.

Saturday:
Alnwick Castle (Harry Potter day), weather nice, Barter Books, Ben get sickness bug.

Sunday:
Holy Island, pleasant weather, long walk, Lucas gets sickness bug.

Monday:
Cragside, beautiful weather and amazing place, long walks, great bridge, play the hat game :-)

Tuesday:
Farm park outing, it bloody snows, came home to 12 hour power cut, drink a lot by candle light.

Wednesday:
Claire gets sickness bug, Meal at Tree house at Alnwick, get call from solicitor to say house sale can complete, Stu and I have to drive home remove furniture from house and post keys into estate agents. Goodbye house. I start throwing up on way back, sickness bug gets me.

Thursday:
Sunny :-) Bamburgh Castle (amazing), picnic, surreal telephone call in Castle to sale house sale is completed. Onto the beach, everything is lovely. Maisie get sickness bug.

Friday:
Pack up, Stu complains of tummy aches :-( bug comes home with us.

All in all a strange and yet wonderful holiday, and in the next few posts I'll explain why.

Hope you had a great half term holiday

Amanda.x.

Maisie's Bread and Butter Pudding

Maisie and I have had a few conversations of late on food my Mum used to make me when I was growing up, Maisie thought Bread and Butter Pudding sounded really funny and not real pudding at all, I was shocked that it was something we'd never made together so set to put that right.

You'll need:

85g of butter

6-8(depending on dish size) slices of thick bread, we used wholemeal which gives a nutty flavour. 

55g of sultanas 

3 large eggs

300ml of milk

150ml of Double cream

55g of Caster Sugar

Some mixed spice

Handful of soft brown sugar.

 Pre heat oven to gas mark 4(about 180c) and get your helper to grease a oven proof dish. 

Cut away crusts from bread and cut into triangles, butter both sides, then lay out the bread in the dish while hiding fruit in-between each layer.

In whisking jug, add eggs, milk, cream, heaped spoonful of mixed spice and caster sugar. Whisk well, and pour over the bread in dish, leave mixture for about 20minutes so the bread can soak up the mixture. 

Poke down any sultanas not hidden well so they don't burn in the oven.

The joys of having a kitchen helper like Maisie is how proud they look when they've made something and know they'll to eat it themselves late on.

Sprinkle over handful of soft brown sugar, and and a little more mixed spice.

Place on a baking tray and into oven for about half an hour, or until golden brown on top.

 Opps, ours got a little overdone on sticky out parts but tasted delicious. Maisie was very impressed and asked what it would taste like if we put Nutella on the bread. 

People I have a genius living with me, why have I never thought of that? 

We'll keep you updated on the Nutella pudding. 

Please enjoy, and if you try our recipe and enjoy it please let me know.

Love Amanda.x.

A New Addition

Welcome to our household Buffy, no not the slaying kind (well maybe to small creatures) the feline one.

 My friends Mum has been ill recently, and Buffy is her cat. We've adopted her for now, and she's settled so well into our household. 

Although does not like her picture taken, does she not realise she's in a blogging household? 

The kids love her, learning not to chase, how to stroke a cat nicely and how brush her correctly. 

It's a great part of growing up having pets to care for and be gentle with.

 Buffy however in usual Cat ways has made everything around her, her domain.  As above it would seem a  cuddly Lima felt the wrath of her paw. 

Amanda.x.

Barbie/Disney Doll holder.

As a Mum finding your Daughters collection of Disney/Barbies like this not uncommon. Which is a shame after spending all that money on them, you can't see them, also their hair goes crazy. After this picture was taken I spent 20 minutes combing Rapunzels hair and it's still all matted.

 So I came up with a plan, I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this but I bought a over the door shoe holder from Dunelm £3.99, and a fabric pen. I liked the plain colour but they did have bright blue and pink too.

 I wrote the names of the dolls Maisie already has, leaving gaps for future dolls, I kept them even at each side so the holder didn't lean. I used the last row for shoes, clothes and accessories.

 Then I got some glue, flowers and buttons out.

This a job your child could do themselves, and could be a great way to spend their day.

 Ta da, a completed doll holder.

 No tangle dolls, and you can see them all and know they're all safe.

A good way to help a 5 year learn how to look after her treasures.

Hope this was helpful

Amanda.x.

Dorset 2011

For the past couple of years my family, Mother and Father-in-Law.Sister in Law and her family have all had a Summer holiday together, in previous years we've done Devon, Cornwell, Somerset so this year it was the rightful turn of Dorset. 

We stayed at Woodhyde Courtyard at Corfe. 

Wow, what a beautiful place, I loved this holiday venue best of all. 

 Our holiday house was very close to Corfe Castle, where we spent a great day out with the kids, it's mostly ruined but they enjoyed scrabbling about and guessing what the rooms used to be.

This is Corfe Castle during what was one of the best sunsets I've ever seen.

 Maisie did a lot of this during the holiday.

 And Lucas did a lot of that.

 Maisie, Lucas and Daddy at the top of Corfe Castle.

 We did have a bit of unpredictable weather, this was our holiday BBQ. Look at those clouds.

 Oh actually this is the other direction at the same time, with my lovely Hubby manning the BBQ.  We had a great dinner and the weather stayed nice that evening. 

 The holiday house had other welcome visitors while we were there too.

 The holiday house had it's own pool too which when he weather got bad was a great asset, the children were in the pool at least once a day and I was surprised they didn't develop webbed feet by the end of the week.

 It also had a games room where the boys learn to shoot pool, you may notice the cue is the wrong way but that was to aid play and save the green, Lucas loved following his older Nephews around and doing boy stuff.

 Maisie also learn to play ping pong, and she now has a mean serve, which sometimes rebounds from the ceiling but that's just the way we play.

Hope your Summer holiday's have been full of fun, games and sunny days.

Love Amanda.x.

Tullie House - Roman Frontier Gallery

Our local museum Tullie House has had a bit of a regeneration lately, it's now become a trust held site and spent millions on a new Roman Frontier Gallery. This is something my family was eagerly waiting for, we go to Tullie at every opportunity as for local people its free entry, and the gallery exhibitions are exceptional and for young children they normally add extras that help them take part and explore art.

We went on opening day, which meant they were some extra special activities to take part in.

Nijmegen Helmet, it still has some of it's gilt and gold decoration, when worn by a Roman soldier it must have been a sight to behold. This is the first time it's been seen in the UK. 

 Maisie really liked the nudey lady statues, she thought the Roman ladies looked very pretty but may have been a bit cold walking around Cumbria like this.

 Lucas loved the dressing up section of the museum, he rocked the Roman look, and spent most his time playing with the little camping stove.

 The new Roman gallery  is well thought out, with lovely spaces and all age ranges taken into account. We'll certainly be visiting again over the Summer holidays. 

This is Maisie and Lucas enjoying a talk on herbs used in Roman Britain and making a Roman necklace.

 I hope that Tullie House continues this level of renewal throughout the whole gallery, it's starting to look a little dated in other sections. I would especially love to see more of a Natural history element to the museum, I know that this is what the building begun it's life as so I'm sure they have plenty of exhibition material to hand.

I'll do a post on the other galleries within the museum soon, until then this is their site,

 Tullie House, they have a great selection of free or minimal price activities for children throughout the holidays.

Maisie's Review: I am aged 5 and I thought the new gallery was very nice, I liked looking at the statues, jewellery the ladies wore and the boxes that you had to guess the smells. I really liked dressing up but got very hot, I think the Romans would have been very tired wearing this for work. Everything was exciting and interesting but the skeletons were a bit creepy. I would like to go again and see if they are still creepy.

Maisie Simone Ryan.

Amanda.x.

Tutorial: Crayon Butterfly's.

 This is a sweet quick tutorial for multicoloured shaped crayons, we added these to Maisie's party bags and got good reports from parents on them.  

They maybe fun to make during the half term holidays.We use cheap silicone moulds (ours were chocolate ones from Home Bargains) and a couple of packets of wax crayons .

 Remove any paper from crayon, and chop up into small pieces, get children involved by giving them the pieces to fill up the shapes, you need to over fill the voids a little as it sinks down.

 Pop in the over Gas mark 5 for about 15minutes, or until melted down as it depends on your oven. Take out and leave to cool, once set pop them out.

Then draw something beautiful with your rainbow butterfly's.

If you make any in different shapes, please feel free to post a picture as a comment.

Thanks Amanda.x.